Tuesday, 12 August 2014

The light and dark of Robin Williams

My generation fell in love with him as Mork. Then our kids fell hard for Aladdin and Mrs. Doubtfire.

Robin Williams was lucky, too, to be able to live his life as a creative tour de force, to put his joy out into the world like a boomerang.

Joy begets joy. That's the beauty of creativity.

It's one of the greatest gifts a person can be given by God, if you believe in God. It's also a tremendous curse for many, people like Robin whose art came from inner pain.

We couldn't see it, but it was there. He talked about it, tried to rehab it.

It just wouldn't go away, the pain.

It is the devil's pain.

The devil waits, he is the patient sort, standing in the shadows at the AA meetings, and hiding in the closet in the dark. And it hides in the bottom of the bottle of Glenfiddick, just sitting there all warm and cosy.

It is a fortunate man who can escape the demon. Robin nearly escaped him. At least he kept him at bay for twenty years. But in the end, for people like Robin, the devil holds all the cards.

Sometimes the only option to escape the demon is suicide.

Those who have never felt the demon touch their hearts simply cannot understand it.

What a waste, they say. He had everything.

They cannot feel his pain through their own selfishness.

The clown has left the circus and he hasn't even finished the show. We want our money back.

How could he do this to us?

The good news is the demon never wins, not really.

We don't have Robin Williams' body, but we have his body of work.

He will always be up there on the screen making us laugh. That's why he's lucky. He's immortal, isn't he? In Patch and Armand, in Perry and of course, little Mork, the hairy alien.